On 1/30/09, Jan wrote: > My cockatiel died yesterday. He was found in the bottom of > his cage. He had no symptoms and was active. Any ideas?

Oh no, I'm so sorry for your loss. The unfortunate thing is, none of us could do anything other than make wild guesses and that's not what you need. The only way you might be able to ever know is to have a necropsy done. That means you would have to refrigerate, not freeze, his body, and get it to a good avian vet asap. The only other thing you can do would be to go through the many lists of all the toxic things we have in our homes, but must always keep far from our birds, at all costs. I don't know how much experience you have with birds or how much research you may have done on household dangers. But, there may be far more than you could imagine. Many you would never give a thought to, yet some can literally drop a bird in it's tracks. Others are more cumulative and do their damage over time. What makes that difficult is the bird's natural instinct to hide all symptoms from you for as long as possible. Many times, when we see a symptom, it may be too late. The bird has become so ill it can no longer keep up the pretense. Some of the causes of bird deaths are non stick cookware, cooking fumes, candles, incense, any product that sprays into the air, any kind of air freshener no matter the type, carpet sprinkles. fumes from fireplaces and any product with a strong odor like perfumes, hair sprays, etc. That just barely scratches the surface of what comes to mind at the moment. If there is any chance your bird was female and if her diet was not just right, she could have been egg bound. Was this you only bird and if not, did you recently acquire any additional birds? What is the source of your bird food supplies? Tell us about the bird's diet. If any of this gives you any ideas, maybe you can research further. If any of it brings up more questions, by all means, let us know and we will see if we can help any further.